


Midnight Onion

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: the one where they make onion rings at two in the morning???tumblr





	Midnight Onion

“Taemin….”

“Come _on_ , Jonghyun.” Taemin tugs again at Jonghyun’s fingers and Jonghyun shakes his head with a fond little sigh. The only reason Taemin has lifted his arm off of the bed is because Jonghyun has raised it for him.

“Babe, it’s like, two in the morning,” he repeats.

“Yeah, and I’m _hungry,_ ” Taemin whines. He tugs insistently again with his tired little hands with a little hop that makes his copper hair bounce and Jonghyun can’t stop the little laugh that falls from his lips. He’s so fucking cute. He’s trying to fight Jonghyun when his voice is barely more than a sleepy whisper. Jonghyun swears. Only Taemin would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, sit bolt upright, and declare that he wants to go make food. Jonghyun had been dozing off to puppy videos and almost dropped his laptop off of the bed from the shock. At his lack of an answer, Taemin huffs and lets go of his hand. “I’m gonna make food with or without you,” he says, “you being there just significantly decreases the chances of me setting the house on fire.”

He turns purposefully towards the door, stumbles a little bit on his baggy sweats, and shuffles determinedly across the carpet. Jonghyun watches, amused, as he feels up the door for a solid five seconds before he finds the doorknob. Then he sighs again and throws the covers off of his lap. Taemin is right. He’d hate to have to drive Taemin to the emergency room because he conked out over the cutting board and chopped one of his fingers off.

“Come on, sleepy butt,” he hums, catching up to Taemin in the hallway and putting his hands on his waist to keep him upright. “We’ll make you some food.”

“You, too,” Taemin mumbles. “Food is important. You need to eat.” He sways sloppily as he talks and Jonghyun giggles as he holds him steady. It’s like when he gets drunk, except less kissy. He guesses that he could have some of whatever it is that Taemin wants for himself. He was thinking about maybe sneaking a cookie before he went to sleep anyway. Taemin groans when Jonghyun turns the big kitchen light on, so he chuckles and reaches over the stove to turn it’s dim light on instead. Taemin stands there blearily, rubs his eye, and yawns. “Do we have any hash browns left in the freezer?” he asks after a moment.

“Um,” Jonghyun says. He shifts a little guiltily. The box of little hash brown patties. Those. Right. “I, uh, might have eaten the rest of them, yesterday, while you were out,” he says. “Like, the last… six.”

“Don’t the boxes only have ten?” Taemin asks, turning to frown at him. Jonghyun coughs into his shoulder. He was hungry. Taemin takes his silence with a roll of the eyes and leaves his arms to slouch over to one of their low cabinets. He falls to his butt when he bends over to open it, then groans and wiggles into a more comfortable sitting position. Jonghyun watches as he pulls a bag of potatoes halfway out, then makes a lazy noise and pushes them back inside. He’s about to suggest something simpler--cereal, maybe, or some toast--when Taemin gasps dramatically and shoves an arm into the cabinet. When he comes back out, there’s an onion in his hand. A piece of papery skin falls to the floor; Taemin kicks it halfheartedly between the cabinet and the stove. Jonghyun blinks.

“Onion,” he says blankly. He can’t for the life of him imagine what Taemin’s planning to put that in. A quesadilla maybe?

“Onion _rings_ ,” Taemin hisses. He struggles back into a standing position as Jonghyun stares at him in disbelief.

“Onion rings,” He repeats. Those take like, an hour to make. And Taemin always complains that they make him feel gross. And he wants to make them at two in the morning. “Taemin, really?” he asks, stepping forward to get a heavy glass bowl down from a high cabinet before Taemin hurts himself.

“Yes, really,” Taemin says. “They’re warm and crunchy and fucking… delicious, oh my god.” He holds Jonghyun’s bicep and leans his forehead against his shoulder. “They’re so fucking good, Jonghyun.” Sleep is slurring his words; Jonghyun shakes his head with exasperation. He wouldn’t be surprised if Taemin woke up in the morning without remembering a thing and whining about his onion breath. “I’m gonna make them with or without you, and--”

“And I’ll significantly decrease the chances of you burning the house down, I know, I know,” Jonghyun mutters. Fine. He’ll make some onion rings at two in the morning.

“Good,” Taemin hums. “I’m gonna… cut the onion,” he continues, fumbling in their silverware drawer for the big knife, “and you get the batter and the breadcrumbs ready.”

“Whoa, hey--” Jonghyun grabs Taemin’s wrist before he can even think about going through with that plan. He gently takes both the onion and the knife from Taemin’s hands. “Let’s switch those jobs, yeah?” he suggests. He’s pretty sure the most dangerous thing Taemin could do with batter duty is getting some eggshells in the mix. Taemin squints at him for a moment, then puffs up his lips and nods.

“Good plan,” he mumbles. He pats Jonghyun on the arm and teeters away towards the fridge; Jonghyun looks after him with a sigh and reaches over to turn the stove on and heat some oil. Sometimes he’s just… the cutest little shit. He glances over every so often as Taemin fumbles with the batter, worried that he’ll somehow fuck up three ingredients, as he pops the little rings away from each other.

“Don’t forget the seasonings,” he grins when Taemin picks up the breadcrumb bowl to put it by the stove without seasoning them first. Taemin frowns an exaggeratedly ugly frown, turns back slowly, and fumbles with the little bottles of salt, something that Jonghyun chuckles softly at as he brings the rings over to the stove.

The breading of the first batch goes well enough; Taemin is a little clumsier than he usually is when he pats the crumbs onto the rings but it’s really not that hard of a job. Jonghyun stops him a second time when he tries to put the first ones into the oil himself; he doesn’t trust Taemin’s sleepy little fingers. He takes Taemin by the shoulders and gently switches their positions so he can take over battering and breading the rest. He finds himself yawning as he lowers the first batch of rings into the pan. He can’t believe that he’s actually just… standing here and making onion rings at two in the morning. He was gonna fall asleep in a few minutes before Taemin woke him up.

He figures that it’s worth it when he’s in the middle of flipping the third batch over and Taemin decides that the rings from the first are cool enough to eat now. He hands one to Jonghyun and as soon as Jonghyun takes the first bite he immediately takes back all of the grumbling and reluctance he’d been feeling earlier. These are fucking delicious. Taemin thinks so too, if his little moan around his own ring means anything, and Jonghyun smiles sleepily at him and bumps their hips.

Taemin leaves most of the cleanup for him when the rings are all done, which Jonghyun kind of expected. He leaves half of the cleanup for his future morning self anyway, just wiping down the counters and throwing away stray crumbs before he declares things to be good enough and picks up their little bowl full of onion.

“Come on,” he hums, grabbing some napkins and patting Taemin’s butt back towards the bedroom. “I wanna get comfy.” He checks that the stove is off approximately seven times before following Taemin’s tired footsteps down the hallway. Taemin crawls clumsily into bed and picks up Jonghyun’s laptop from where he’d left it on it’s side on the sheets, then pulls the covers back so Jonghyun can slide in easily. Jonghyun switches their hands, handing Taemin the bowl as he gets all settled. The crunching of more onion rings starts up almost immediately and he laughs softly, holding a hand out in askance. Taemin gives him a ring and it registers in his tired mind that even with all of their napkins, their sheets are going to be full of crumbs in the morning.

“What were you watching?” Taemin asks quietly when Jonghyun opens up his laptop again. He snuggles against Jonghyun’s side and pokes at the mousepad until Jonghyun bats his hand away.

“Puppies,” he grins. The puppy video he was watching starts off right where he left it and he wiggles happily. Taemin snorts and shakes his head.

“Of course,” he mutters.

“Hey,” Jonghyun snaps, “you just woke up at two in the morning to make onion rings.” He smiles as he says it, but his point still stands. Taemin is in no position to judge Jonghyun for his choices. Taemin giggles a little bit also and nuzzles his cheek against Jonghyun’s arm.

“And you helped me with it, so I guess I’ll help you with your dog videos,” he hums.

“Good idea,” Jonghyun agrees. He takes another little onion ring and shoves it into his mouth, then slips his arm around Taemin’s shoulders.

In the morning, Taemin groans when he wakes up and asks him why the fuck the room smells like onions. Jonghyun just tugs him closer to his chest and goes back to sleep.


End file.
